Thread by @samagreene

Does Vladimir Putin want negotiations? Almost certainly yes.

Does Putin want to negotiate? Almost certainly not.

The difference is not semantic.

(A long-ish 🧵)

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We have all, by now, read the reporting in the @nytimes about "quiet signals" evidently being sent from the Kremlin to Washington. We have all, I imagine, also seen the criticism of that reporting on this website and elsewhere.

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nytimes.com/2023/12/23/wor…

And, to be sure, we have also seen Russia's continual escalation of its violence in Ukraine, including today's massive aerial bombardment of civilians.

/3

reuters.com/world/europe/r…

The preponderance of continued Russian violence is taken by some as evidence that the reporting in the Times is false -- or worse, part of a nefarious Washington insider plot to force Kyiv to reduce its war aims. I, for one, reject that critique.

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To be clear, there _are_ voices in Washington and elsewhere calling for negotiations, and they will certainly have picked up on the Times' report to bolster their arguments. But that doesn't mean that the signals aren't real.

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The problem is that people mean different things when they say "negotiate".

Saying that the Kremlin wants to talk is not the same thing as saying that it sees talking as a means to achieving peace. Assuming the Kremlin means what we mean is a mistake.

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The problem begins in Russia. The Kremlin does not want peace for the simple reason that peace would undermine the Kremlin's domestic power. This war has reshaped every aspect of Russian political life, and much of Russian social and economic life, to the benefit of Putin.

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The war has submerged the pre-war foundations on which Putin's power was built -- the material bargain between the Kremlin, the elites and the masses -- to such an extent that the Kremlin cannot be sure whether those foundations would still hold in peacetime.

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That is one of the reasons why Putin never talks about what life will look like after the war: for political purposes, he needs existential geopolitical confrontation to last for the rest of his natural life.

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But he also needs the war to be manageable. As we have seen, the Kremlin works hard to contain the war's material impact on ordinary Russians, and to suppress those flashes of dissatisfaction that do emerge. A war where he doesn't control the escalatory dynamics is risky.

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These risks mount, of course, the closer we get to the March 2024 presidential "elections". Putin is likely assuming -- and likely correctly -- that Ukraine and the West will seek to deliver him a series of blows ahead of the elections, with unpredictable consequences.

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Drawing the West into a negotiating process -- and let's be clear, it's the West he wants to talk with, not Kyiv -- thus serves an obvious purpose: it reduces the Western appetite for fighting and puts the Kremlin in control of escalation.

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For Putin, this strategy is predicated on the mismatch between Russian and Western interests in this war. Putin recognizes that the West -- including ardent supporters of Ukraine's full victory -- genuinely wants peace. This gives him an advantage.

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Putin knows that, if talks begin, the West will want to see them succeed and will likely be loathe to do anything that might undermine that success -- like provide new weapons systems to Ukraine or fast-track NATO membership. That alone is reason enough for Putin to talk.

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If negotiations -- or even discussions about negotiations -- even temporarily slow the pace of Western financial, military and diplomatic support for Ukraine's war effort, they will achieve most of what Putin needs them to.

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The problem is this: For the West, negotiations are a means of ending the war. For Russia, they are a means of winning it.

Putin recognizes this mismatch and is eager to exploit it. I'm not sure all Western policymakers understand it, however.

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To make matters worse, there is nothing that Western powers can put on the negotiating table that will change this logic -- because there is nothing they can offer that could supplant war as the foundation of Putin's power.

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None of this is to say that the war will not eventually end with negotiations. As has been said ad nauseam, all wars end with negotiations -- even when those negotiations are preceded by a resounding military victory. This much is true.

But not all negotiations end wars.

/END